Royal tombs discovered at Abydos

Via Yahoo! News, a report from Egypt that archaeologists there have discovered a complex of 13 tombs at Abydos dating to the Old Kingdom, although the report says "3000 B.C.," which would place them in the 1st Dynasty, a period sometimes called Early Dynastic and distinguished from the Old Kingdom beginning in the 3rd Dynasty -- just sloppiness or an indication that these are particularly old? The tombs are possibly 'royal' according to the story, which just means possibly tombs of queens or high-ranking court officials and not Pharaohs. I'll post more details as they become available.

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George Washington's boyhood home uncovered

This has gotten quite a bit of attention, so I thought it deserved a post. Ferry Farm, a plantation outside of Fredericksburg, VA and the site of George Washington's boyhood home, has been discovered by archaeologists. CNN has a lengthy article here with pictures and video. Excavations have been ongoing for three years -- there wasn't any 'aha!' discovery recently that warranted all the attention, but merely the decision to make an official announcement. Slate's Explainer talks about some of the details of excavation and recording, including just what you do with half a million artifacts.

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Oldest Monumental Structure in Peru discovered

(Photo from El Comercio/Reuters)

As reported Sunday in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, and related in several English language sources, archaeologists in Peru have discovered a circular architectural complex at Sechin Bajo, on the Peruvian coast north of Lima dated to approximately 3500 BC. That makes it one of the oldest examples of monumental architecture in the New World.

The oldest remains of complex civilization in South America come from the Peruvian coast, where the remains of mud-brick platforms known as huacas are found grouped symmetrically around a large open plaza or plazas. The earliest of these sites date before the discovery of ceramic technology, at a time when the economy was based on cotton agriculture (as well as peanut and squash) and the exploitation of the rich offshore fishing grounds. Archaeologists not surprisingly call this period the Cotton Preceramic. The usual dates span approximately 2500 to 1500 BC, but discoveries like those at Sechin Bajo are pushing the start of complex civilization earlier and earlier.

These centers probably had populations up to a couple thousand or so. Attention has focused on the large mud-brick huacas, which probably had a ceremonial (and perhaps also a political or social) function, the precise nature of which is unclear, since we lack written records. The platforms were topped by buildings consisting of a series of courtyards and rooms constructed in stone. Some of these structures have painted or sculpted decoration, which is difficult to interpret. Our knowledge is still very limited however, and much remains to be discovered.

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Lupercal?

Apparently, not everyone is convinced that the recent discovery on the Palatine is really the Lupercal, as reported. An interview with Adriano La Regina, former superintendant of archaeology in Rome, was published by La Stampa yesterday. When questioned about the recent discovery he said that what Angelo Bottini, the current superintendant, found was merely a nymphaeum, or fountain house, that likely formed part of the Domus Transitorium, which was Nero's older palace at the foot of the Palatine. He notes resemblances between the architecture and decoration and that of Nero's Golden House. He says that the literary sources indicate that the Lupercal was located somewhere a short distance to the west of the recent excavations. Until the results are published, it won't be possible to assess which of the two interpretations are correct, but I'll keep an eye on this dispute as it plays out.

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Lupercal!

(Photo by Benvegnù-Guaitoli)

Italian newspapers are reporting an announcement by archaeologists that the Lupercal, the legendary cave in which Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf, has been found (English version here). Ancient Rome was littered with places that the Romans related to their mythical past. Romulus was said to have founded Rome on the Palatine hill, and in later years there was an actual Hut of Romulus on the hill, preserved, the ancient Romans believed, from the city's origin. Later archaeological excavation discovered the foundations of Iron Age houses on the hill, which must have been discovered by the Romans while building on the hill and reconstructed in a bit of ancient archaeology. Literary sources also tell of a cave in which the twin brothers were suckled after their father exposed them by the Tiber. Later, they were discovered and raised by the shepherd, Faustulus. The Romans identified the supposed cave and built a shrine there, which was the central place of the festival known as the Lupercalia, but it had been lost until the recent discovery (although there are Renaissance accounts that indicate it still existed then).

(Photo by Benvegnù-Guaitoli)

The grotto was discovered during the recent restoration work done on the House of Augustus. A small shaft (shown above) led researchers to a domed hall, much of which was filled with debris. The dome is covered with painting, stucco and seashells, in very vivid colors. The location is appropriate, as Augustus restored the cave and reinstituted the Lupercalia as part of his program of religious revival.

From literary sources, we know the Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15. Priests, known as Luperci, would sacrifice two male goats and a dog, and two young patrician youths would be smeared with the blood, after which it would be wiped off with wool dipped in milk. Leather thongs would be cut from the skins of the sacrifices, and the priests would run around the Palatine, striking everybody they came upon. Girls who were struck were thought to become extra fertile. The ceremony lasted until the end of the 5th century, when it was outlawed by Pope Gelasius.

Further excavation of the site may tell us more about the Lupercalia and the cult activity here.

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Archaeologists discover 4000 year old temple in Peru

Reuters is reporting that archaeologists excavating at the site of Ventarron have discovered a temple and fire altar dating to approximately 2000 BC. They also report that murals have been found inside the temple, which would be among the oldest examples known from the New World. This is a significant find and combined with the discovery last summer of a slightly older temple at Buena Vista, is further indication of the sophistication of civilization in South America at this early date.

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I'm Baaaaack

(Reuters photo)

Okay, I have to admit, I hit the six month blogging wall. Life started getting busy, and once I stopped posting, it became difficult to get into the swing of things.

Now I'm tanned, rested and ready for some more archaeology news.

The big story of the last couple of days is the discovery of the world's oldest wall painting, found in Syria at a Neolithic site on the Euphrates called Djade al-Mughara. (Oldest not counting cave paintings, of course). The painting has been carbon dated to 9000 BC. As you can see from the photo above, the decoration consists of geometric patterns in red, white, and black, created using hematite, chalk, and charcoal.


The abstract nature of the painting has prompted predictable comparisons to modern artists, such as Mondrian or Klee. Needless to say, any resemblance, as they say in Hollywood, is purely coincidental. The article linked above quotes a Syrian artist who says ""We must not lose sight that the painting is archaeological, but in a way it's also modern," he said."

No. It isn't modern. It is very, very old, created by a society with different ideas and beliefs than our own. Geometric patterns are found around the world, and there is no single wellspring for them, rather they are the product of the human mind's love of pattern. What it does show is humanity's common urge for artistic expression.

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More Tombs! Aztec Royal Tomb Possibly Located

In more tomb news, archaeologists in Mexico believe they may have located the tomb of Montezuma's uncle and predecessor, the Aztec emperor Ahuizotl. This would be an unparalleled find, as no Aztec royal tomb has ever been discovered. Aztec royalty were buried in Tenochtitlan, which the Spanish methodically stripped of its native monuments in converting it to Mexico City. Most of the major Aztec buildings have later structures on top of them. Some of these colonial-era buildings burned down in 1993, giving researchers a rare opportunity to dig beneath. Excavators are working through what appear to be votive deposits and have discovered a possible entrance (the news articles are unhappily less than clear), and ground-penetrating radar has revealed what may be chambers beneath the soil. Above the site was found a stone monument with a carving of an Aztec earth goddess, Tlaltecuhtli, with a date, 1502. That is the year Ahuizotl died.

Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The lake has long since been drained, but the water table underneath Mexico City is still quite close to the surface, making work difficult. I'll keep our readers updated if any further news comes in.

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Intact Etruscan Tomb discovered

I have a lot of backlog built up, and I'll be emptying it out here over the next few days. First, I wish to report that archaeologists have just announced that an intact Etruscan tomb has been found in central Italy. The tomb is rather small, only 2 x 1.8 meters in size, but was well-stocked nonetheless, with intact vessels and bronze artifacts. Most known Etruscan tombs were either discovered and emptied in the 18th and 19th centuries, or looted (which in some cases amounts to the same thing). Finding an intact tomb is pretty rare. Best of all, the tomb contains cremation burials (the usual Etruscan custom). It is not often that early excavators preserved osteological (i.e. bone) remains. At the Pennsylvania Museum, we have some human bones from tombs in central Italy, but finding more is definitely nice. From the reports, it sounds like many of the burials in this tomb were of children. No paintings are mentioned, so it is likely that the tomb was relatively undecorated, which given its modest size is not surprising.

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Out of Town

Sorry for the absence of updates over the last few days; I'm out of town this week and won't be able to get back to regular posting before Monday. To tide you over, I am posting a link to recent news of a huge tannery complex being excavated in Rome. Dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., the complex is the largest known from the Roman world. Unfortunately, the complex is directly in the path of a new railroad being constructed. The only choices are to either halt construction completely, or to move the site. The former is pretty much impossible, so they are looking into the latter, which would be a mammoth project. A similar dilemma was encountered in Spain outside Córdoba in the late 90s when construction of a new high-speed rail line hit the remains of a huge 3rd century palace. In that case, the railroad was continued after excavation, destroying about half of the site.

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Octoparchaeology

Via that doyen of all thing tentacly, PZ Meyers, comes a news story about an Korean octopus fisherman. While trawling for his catch, he pulled up several octopuses with bits of pottery stuck to their tentacles. He didn't pay much attention until one octopus came up holding an entire plate. He took the finds to a local museum, where they were identified as rare 12th century Koryo porcelain. The cephalopods must have been visiting a local shipwreck, although it's not known how they acquired their affinity for fine antiques. Probably they were simply trying to grasp onto anything to avoid being pulled to the surface. Now, octopuses are smart. How long before some enterprising treasure seeker tries to train the critters to fetch objects from the sea floor?

Pedant note: the second article linked refers to pottery "shards." The proper archaeological term when referring to pottery is "sherds," though you can still speak of shards of glass.

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Lions and Tigers and.....Satyrs? Oh my!

There is an interesting story in USA Today which, if true, would definitely qualify as "Weird Archaeology." There was a recent discovery of a preserved human body in an Iranian salt mine. The dry conditions in such locations help preserve soft tissue and hair, and there have been other such discoveries in recent years. The dessication creates shriveled-up faces and snub noses on the bodies. This observation has led Adrienne Mayor of Stanford University to suggest that the discovery of such bodies lay behind the ancient Greek stories of satyrs -- humanoid creatures that are generally depicted with goats' legs, pot bellies, prominent phalluses, snub noses and prominent beards. Mayor is known for her hypotheses that discoveries of fossilized animals lie behind many ancient myths of giants and monsters -- for example, a mastodon's skull, with its prominent nasal opening, could have been the inspiration for the cyclops.

One piece of suggestive evidence is an account of a visit of the Emperor Constantine to Antioch in the early 4th century A.D., where, it is recounted, he was shown the remains of a 'satyr' which had been preserved in salt. Could he have been looking at a body like those from the Iranian salt mines? It's a tempting idea, although not something we could ever definitively establish.

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Treasure Trove

You may have heard something over the last few days about the discovery of a hoard of Viking treasure in northern England. It has been reported in most major news outlets, and the treasure has recently gone on display in the British Museum. More than 600 coins and 65 other silver and gold objects were found, including items acquired via trade or plunder from Scandinavia, Russia, Afghanistan, and France, among others. The hoard was discovered by a father and son who were prospecting with metal detectors. This news is a good example of the positives and negatives about Britain's treasure trove law.

Without going into too much detail, the treasure trove law (as modified by the Treasure Act of 1996) determines the destination of objects that are found and for which no owner can be determined. Under British common law, if ownerless objects are merely lost (like change falling out of your pocket), they belong to the finder. If they are deliberately stashed (like the hoard in question), then they belong to the crown. The Treasure Act modifies this basic principle to ensure the finder receives just recompense even if title is not awarded. The effect is that if you find a valuable object or objects, you have to report them to a government official. If they are determined to fall under the category of treasure trove, the finder must offer them for sale to a museum, at a price set by a board of antiquities experts. Only if no buyer can be found can the objects be kept by the finder. Under British law the owner of property on which antiquities are found is considered the 'finder' in question, unless treasure seekers have come to an agreement with the owner to split the proceeds.

What are the advantages of the law? It provides an incentive for treasure seekers to report their finds and helps ensure that antiquities end up in the hands of public caretakers, who are presumably the most qualified to conserve and display the objects, so that all can benefit.

On the other hand, it also means that treasure seekers have an easy and legitimate avenue for realizing profit from their activities. While this is clearly preferable to illicit excavations of the kind I have reported on in the past, the fact remains that the two gentlemen who dug up the hoard were not archaeologists, and there was no controlled excavation. Depending on the nature of the find, invaluable archaelogical context may have been destroyed. In addition, one can expect the publicity of this find to encourage even more treasure seekers to go digging around the countryside, at unknown cost to archaeology.

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Queen Hatshepsut found!

Big, big news today. Researchers in Egypt have made a positive identification of a mummy as the body of Queen Hatshepsut, one of only a handful of female Pharaohs in Egyptian history and a major New Kingdom player. Her tomb (which had been desecrated after her death in an act of damnatio memoriae) has long been identified but it didn't contain any bodies. It did, however, contain some personal effects, including a box with Hatshepsut's cartouche containing a tooth. That tooth has been matched to a mummy found in a disturbed coffin, one of two, in a nearby tomb. The coffins had obviously been moved from somewhere else. One coffin bore the name of Hatshepsut's wet-nurse. The other held an anonymous woman, aged 45 to 60, who was apparently obese and suffering from cancer. She was also missing a tooth, and the tooth from Hatshepsut's tomb exactly fits into the jaw. The identification seems certain.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Tuthmosis I, and married to her brother, Tuthmosis II. When he died, she took the throne as Pharaoh in her own right (although technically she was only regent for her son, Tuthmosis III), adopting masculine imagery in royal portraiture and sponsoring trading expeditions to East Africa.

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Herod the Great's Tomb Discovered?

[Updated Wednesday, May 9 below]

Hey, folks, grading is finally finished! Whooo!! Sorry for so few posts recently. Between a wedding last week and grading this week, I haven't had a lot of free time to post. I promise to make it up to you.

The big news today is a report that archaeologists in Israel have uncovered the tomb of Herod the Great, who ruled the area during the late 1st c. BC and who figures prominently in the New Testament, among other things. The strange thing is, we've known all along where he was buried. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus tells us:

After this, they betook themselves to prepare for the king's funeral; and Archelaus omitted nothing of magnificence therein, but brought out all the royal ornaments to augment the pomp of the deceased. There was a bier all of gold, embroidered with precious stones, and a purple bed of various contexture, with the dead body upon it, covered with purple; and a diadem was put upon his head, and a crown of gold above it, and a scepter in his right hand; and near to the bier were Herod's sons, and a multitude of his kindred; next to which came his guards, and the regiment of Thracians, the Germans. also and Gauls, all accounted as if they were going to war; but the rest of the army went foremost, armed, and following their captains and officers in a regular manner; after whom five hundred of his domestic servants and freed-men followed, with sweet spices in their hands: and the body was carried two hundred furlongs, to Herodium, where he had given order to be buried. And this shall suffice for the conclusion of the life of Herod.

Herodium, located just SE of Bethlehem, was one of several lavish palace complexes built by Herod during his reign. Masada and Caesarea Maritima are two others. Herodium was a sort of fortress-palace, like Masada, centered on a large circular structure on a prominent hill. A large circumference wall and four towers provided security. Within were well-appointed royal apartments. There were also gardens, pools and pavilions surrounding the central complex. Some 75 years after Herod's death, the palace was occupied by rebels during the Jewish revolt, and they made some small modifications to the interior layout. The site was eventually captured by Roman soldiers without much fuss after the fall of Jerusalem.

The site has been the subject of excavations for decades, and the palace itself is a relatively small, well-defined space, so it is interesting that the tomb waited so long to be discovered. Unfortunately, the early reports say little about where the tomb was located within the palace. Apparently fragments of the sarcophagus were preserved, but there is no report of the kind of grave goods listed by Josephus. Considering the number of people tramping around the site after Herod's death, this wouldn't be surprising.

(Weird stuff: I found this link to an apparent report of the discovery of the tomb dated March 17, 2005. Later in the post the author then says "The reader might be a little disappointed to learn that the above report is fictitious." Strange. Note that this is the first Google result for "Herod's Tomb," and given the amount of detail in this bogus report, I wouldn't be surprised if it leaked into reports of the recent, authentic discovery).

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[Update: Yahoo news has a slideshow showing some of the new discoveries here. The interesting images are towards the middle. The first thing I notice is that Herod's tomb is located at the margins of the fortress of Herodium; this likely explains why it wasn't discovered before. Also, the sarcophagus of Herod is very fragmentary, so it seems unlikely that much if anything remains of the objects placed in the tomb with the deceased.

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2000-year-old Chariot Discovered Intact

News has been filtering out of Bulgaria since this weekend about a discovery of an intact chariot of the 2nd century B.C. in a tomb in Bulgaria. (Some reports say the chariot dates to the 2nd millenium B.C., but this appears to be in error). The ancient land of Thrace comprised much of what is today Bulgaria, northeastern Greece and European Turkey, but much about their culture is unknown, due largely to the dearth of written records. Many spectacular tombs have been discovered in Bulgaria in recent decades (the pic in the header is one such, of the 4th c. BC), of which this is only the latest. Although the wooden parts of the chariot had rotted away, its shape could be reconstructed based upon the iron fittings used in its construction. It apparently was pulled by three horses, had two wheels and a bronze roof, and the passenger rode in an iron seat.

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